Marina Prior stars in Hello, Dolly! for TPC, with Jesus Christ Superstar and Brigadoon also programmed for 2017.

Dolly Levi, the inimitable, widowed matchmaker from Yonkers in Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical comedy Hello, Dolly!, is a role that Marina Prior has long had on her eye on. And now the time has come. Prior will play the brassy, larger-than-life Dolly for The Production Company (TPC) in a new staging directed by Gary Young, which opens the 2017 season on May 27.

^{Marina Prior will play Dolly Levi for The Production Company. Photograph: supplied}

One of Australia’s most popular leading ladies, Prior will star opposite her real-life husband Grant Piro as Horace Vandergelder, the penny-pinching “well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire” who enlists Dolly to find him a young bride. Dolly, however, has other ideas. Prior and Piro performed together for TPC in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in 2009.

“I’m so excited to be back at The Production Company taking on the classic comic role of Dolly Levi. It’s been a dream of mine to do this iconic show, and right now I feel ready for the...